Environmental justice forum focuses on a healthier Buffalo

“This forum will showcase the on-the-ground work being done by SUNY Buffalo Law School students and faculty that’s changing lives here in Buffalo while becoming a model for next-generation environmental justice elsewhere in the nation.”

Kim Diana Connolly, Director

Healthy Homes Legal Practicum, UB Law School

Local activists, academics, community organizers and federal
experts will exchange ideas toward making Western New York’s
homes and communities healthier at a daylong environmental justice
forum on April 26.

The gathering, titled “An Environmental Justice Forum for
Buffalo Homes and Neighborhoods,” will run from 9 a.m. to 2
p.m. at the University at Buffalo’s Clinical and
Translational Research Center, 875 Ellicott St.

Matthew Tejada, recently installed as director of the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental
Justice, will open the forum. William J. Hochul '94, US attorney
for the Western District of New York, will discuss the importance
of enforcement in addressing healthy homes matters. Other
presenters include environmental justice experts from the
EPA’s headquarters offices, the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry.

The program’s sponsors include SUNY Buffalo Law School and
its Healthy Homes Legal Practicum, the Community Foundation for
Greater Buffalo’s Green and Healthy Homes Initiative,
Neighborhood Legal Services, UB’s Civic Engagement and Public
Policy Research Initiative and the UB Office of Sustainability.

Students participating in the Law School practicum provide legal
support to the National Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, which
has chosen Buffalo as one of 17 pilot cities for its work in
promoting safer housing. Among the work produced by practicum
students is 36-page publication called “A
Neighborhood’s Continuing Evolution: An Environmental Justice
Walking Tour of Buffalo, NY’s West Side.”

Professor Kim Diana Connolly, who directs the Law School’s
clinical program and is one of three instructors of the practicum,
says of the conference: “This forum will showcase the
on-the-ground work being done by SUNY Buffalo Law School students
and faculty that’s changing lives here in Buffalo while
becoming a model for next-generation environmental justice
elsewhere in the nation.”

The conference recognizes the presence, especially in the City
of Buffalo, of an aging and deteriorating housing stock,
environmentally unhealthy conditions in many neighborhoods, as well
as high poverty and unemployment rates. Many families live in homes
or communities that are unhealthy, unsafe and not
energy-efficient.

Though local groups have been working to address these problems,
their efforts are incompletely coordinated. The forum seeks to
begin to develop “a truly sustainable strategy for healthy
homes and communities that can become a model for other
cities.”

SUNY Buffalo Law School will offer 2.0 free non-transitional CLE
credits in the area of Professional Practice.to lawyers who attend
the forum. The Law School has been certified by the New York State
Continuing Legal Education Board as an Accredited Provider of
continuing legal education in the State of New York for the period
of March 11, 2011 - March 10, 2014. For further information on the
Law School’s CLE policy, contact Lisa Mueller at
645-3176.